


infinitely suffering things

by brella



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Allison, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Post-3B - Freeform, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1661798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're okay now.</p><p>Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	infinitely suffering things

**Author's Note:**

> This is, on some level, for my friend [audikatia](http://audikatia.tumblr.com), who requested Richard Siken-related Stiles/Lydia about a month ago. On another level, PROMO! On yet another level, probably the biggest one, THE NEW COLDPLAY ALBUM IS RUINING MY LIFE!!!!! "ALWAYS IN MY HEAD" PLAYED ON CONSTANT REPEAT THE ENTIRE TIME I WROTE THIS, DON'T TOUCH ME!

_I would like_  
_to be a plain-faced man, living with you quietly._  
_Leave the party but you can't hear me you can_  
_no longer hear me. The dead are boring._  
_Enlightenment is boring._

* * *

Stiles doesn’t wake up screaming anymore, which he guesses is good. This progress could be owing to the fact that he just straight-up doesn’t dream anymore, which might not be as good, but if you want the truth, he’s had enough of dreams (and not knowing when they are and aren’t flickering in front of his heavy-lidded, burning eyes) for a while. He’s filled his quota of dreams for the next, like, thousand years maybe.

Nobody had slept for about four days after what had happened with Allison. Four days had been the time it had taken them to bring her back. Chris Argent hadn’t even planned a funeral, because he had _known_ they would do it. It had been a visceral and messy process, but they’d done it, splattering the nemeton in the ashes of the forefather (Gerard Argent will not be missed, is all they’re saying) and the willingly given blood of a she-wolf, because Kate Argent, while a murderous psychopath, would have to be killed for real if she was ever going to let Allison be taken out of this world. Which Stiles is grateful for, he guesses.

Lydia had reared her pale head back and wailed at the Hunter’s Moon once it had reached its zenith overhead, just like the book Deaton had given them had said to, and Scott, full up with grief and hope, had joined her for the hell of it, and Allison had come back spasming and gasping, the damage drained from her body by all of whatever ridiculously powerful magic ran through the roots under which they’d laid her out. She’d vaulted herself into Lydia’s trembling, dirt-caked arms first. Stiles had almost cried. Almost. The ravaging quality of Scott’s and Lydia’s tears had stopped him, though, because how could he possibly follow that?

Here’s the thing: They go back to school. Malia learns how to pull her claws out, learns how to howl, starting off with the same strangled kitten noises that Scott had way back when. Kira’s mom leaves for a while; no one knows where, and Kira won’t tell them, but she joins the girls’ lacrosse team and goes over to Scott’s after school covered in grass stains and bruises and it’s a nice story, the wolf and the fox, holding hands and ducking their eyes because they don’t really know what they need except for the other to be there. Stiles doesn’t know if it’s love. He hasn’t asked. It’s not his business. It stopped being his business the second Allison died in Scott’s arms. (Because of him.)

(Allison jokes about it, tries to make it out like it wasn’t a big deal and shouldn’t be now. “Come on, you guys. I had that great closing monologue and you had to go and ruin the effect.” This is what they—Scott, Stiles, Lydia, their arms all tied together and to hers—all know she means, though: _Thank you for knowing that I wasn’t ready, no matter what I said to try to make you feel better._ )

Lydia pulls a bit of a vanishing act for a week or so, probably to recover from the fact that she literally screamed her best friend back to life, and probably because of the fact that she lost her voice for days (and the third fact, the one Stiles doesn’t want to think about because of how _guilty_ it makes him feel: the fact that they had buried Aiden on an overcast day when they might have buried Allison). Stiles doesn’t try to pull anything like going to her house to check up on her or texting her thinly veiled questions about her well being. He leaves it alone, leaves _her_ alone. That’s the respectful thing to do when somebody’s mourning. He’s been through that whole routine. The point is that when Lydia comes back in the same old high heels and the same old pink lipstick, everything finally fully swings back into being normal.

And, like, that’s just it. Everything’s back to normal. Stiles considers himself an adaptable person—he’s kind of had to be these past couple of years, what with the whole “best friend werewolf best friend’s girlfriend hunter love of life banshee English teacher darach” thing—but it gets much more difficult to go back to the way things were when your body has been broken into and used to hurt innocent people, to hurt your friends, to hurt the entire fabric of the world. He doesn’t tell anyone that it’s starting to eat him whole, knowing that it’s been there, wondering if it will ever come back.

He puts on a brave face for everybody, though, because that’s his job. Come on, Stiles, get it together, man.

Recovering from being possessed by a chaos spirit or not, Stiles Stilinski is the beacon of hope around here; he’s the one who always figures it out, the one who cracks the jokes and digs up the facts and keeps going and declares his faith in everyone when they’re at their lowest. If he tilts his head and listens hard, he can see that a rhythm has been disrupted; Scott talks more quietly and slowly around him and Allison always does a double-take when she sees him and Isaac is obviously, like, going out of his way not to sit next to Stiles at lunch. And that’s cool. Stiles gets it. Three weeks ago, he’d been trying to kill them all, and there had been nothing different about his face save for the purpling rings under his eyes and the unnatural twisting shape of his smile.

The problem is, though, that even though he doesn’t dream anymore (because maybe the nogitsune had drained him of the capacity for it), or maybe _because_ he doesn’t dream anymore, life feels that much more surreal. It's like this: when the nogitsune would crawl its way through his veins and infest his bones with the void and laugh and laugh, he would just black out, frozen in the endless dark, coming to not knowing why there was so much blood on his hands, oh, God, or what he had _done_. They tell him that yes, it’s gone, it’s gone forever, over and over again, but waking up after a steady descent into a sinkhole without detail or light still forces him to take fifteen minutes every morning to sit up in bed and slow his breathing and count the fingers on his hands and check the room for signs of violence and then just—just _cry_ , silently, so that his dad won’t hear him, so that his dad won’t worry.

He eats a lot to gain the weight back. He has to spend most of his time sitting down so he won’t pass out. He sleeps with a flyswatter. Life goes on.

SATs are coming up, so Scott’s been having Stiles quiz him on vocab. They start out easy— _dirge_ , a mournful song; _smelt_ , to refine an ore—and eventually get a little harder— _variegated_ , multicolored or speckled; _clandestine_ , secret.

 _Somnambulist_. Sleepwalker. _Recuperate_. To recover after an illness. _Contrite_. Sorry. Sorry.

Sorry.

 

* * *

 

Lydia is okay now.

She hadn’t been, at first, but that’s understandable, isn’t it? When you have to face the possibility that your best friend is dead, that she died because of _you_ , because you weren’t loud enough, clear enough, quick enough, good enough (something Lydia has never been in her life), you’re not going to be okay. Everyone else had been gridlocked into the world-destroying seconds before the grief began, but not Lydia; she had let the denial consume her and ignite into anger and she and stamped her foot down and said, _No. Not yet. Not her._

“That’s something nobody knows about banshees,” Peter had told her in that insidious drawl of his, circling her like the wolf must have circled Little Red, when she had bitten her tongue and gone to him for—she scoffs at herself now and she’d scoffed at herself then—help. “They’re not just heralds of death, you know. They can be guides through it, too, if they’re good enough.”

“Explain,” Lydia had ordered him tautly.

He had smiled at her, all teeth, and she had remembered the red lines her blood had made between them.

“If you can hear the voices of the dead, Lydia, why shouldn’t you be able to go to the source?” It had seemed like a riddle. Lydia hates riddles, the roundabout triviality of them. “Banshees can go between the worlds. Be loud enough. Maybe it will lead her back.” He had shrugged. “If you’re lucky.”  

“What’s the catch?” she had asked, because there always is one.  

“Oh, the usual,” Peter had said. “You’ll never be the same.” The sun had set outside. “Once you’ve done it—can’t go back.” And he had been right.

They can’t go back. Big deal. Tell her something she doesn’t know. (Good luck.)

It’s not that difficult, grappling with an unidentifiable shift inside of her, coping with the new volume of the voices, the way that they only press up against her ears now if she wants to hear them, though she no longer has to strain to do it. Where there had once been shivering whispers, there is now an unrelenting clamor, but she can shut it off if she goes over human anatomy or historiography of the Russian Revolution in her head. Maybe that’s what’s different. She isn’t actually sure. That’s what bothers her.

Winter break is coming up. After that, SAT tests. College applications. The future. She tries to focus on it, tries to fall back into the ebb and flow of something resembling normalcy, but Aiden’s funeral is a small affair on a rainy day in the woods and she feels like her chest is going to split apart for how _quiet_ he is, how he doesn’t bother her, how his voice doesn’t come near her; Stiles moves more slowly like he's mortally terrified of himself and doesn’t talk to her as much and she knows him well enough, suddenly, to recognize which of his smiles are hollow and which are, despite their weakness, genuine; Malia asks her, in a blurt, how to make friends, and Lydia wonders if there’s a balance to it all, to the fact that Aiden’s gone but Malia has been led back to the world denied to her, saved from being an animal caught in a trap until it bled to death. And Kira starts to play lacrosse and Isaac walks closer to Allison and Allison, _Allison_ —Allison breathes and walks and there are no catches, no loopholes, to having her back here again, but Lydia is too afraid that this is a dream to be happy.

She had held onto Allison’s arm for the whole Jeep ride back into town and cried.

She remembers the ruptured feeling in her chest when she had felt Aiden go, and nothing really beyond it—she’d whirled around and gone to flee somewhere, anywhere, but Stiles’s chest and Stiles’s arms had stopped her, and her mournful death-scream had been muffled by his shirt when she had buried her face in it, gripping the fabric, almost buckling him over from how fiercely she’d clung to him and wailed with grief too big for her body.

It’s a strange thing to admit, but the most painful part of all of this is that Stiles doesn’t look her in the eye anymore, doesn’t text her at three in the morning with bizarre non sequitur ghost stories and facts about unsolved murder cases and shark behavior. Or maybe the more painful thing about it is that she doesn’t try to change it; she doesn’t ask him what’s wrong or absentmindedly brush her fingers against his arm when there’s a pack meeting, and she most definitely doesn’t think about how everything inside of her had plunged down, down, down at the sight of him lifting the katana to his stomach with a frighteningly resolute expression on his pallid face. She doesn’t think about what it means. You can’t make facts from guesses or guesses from anomalies.

If there was a science to love, maybe she really _would_ know everything. Not that this is love. It could be. It might be. She doesn’t know. She walks past Stiles in the hallway without saying good morning and persistently, agonizingly doesn’t know.

It starts to occur to her—slowly at first, then with the swiftness of a punch to the heart—that whatever proverbial walls she had erected around herself, walls made of mascara and biochemistry and closed doors and unanswered messages, are practically gone now. It’s hard to find time for the upkeep of those kinds of things when she carries death under her tongue and walks with the monsters her parents had warned her about when she was too young to know the difference between the real and the fabled, when werewolves had been wolfmen in cheesy makeup who stole away young girls in white dresses because they were evil and not lonely.

She’d always thought that she was too smart to believe in monsters. Maybe not believing in them had been the stupid thing to do.   

Finals come and go and Lydia aces all of them and the winter rain starts coming down harder. Break starts up in mid-December and Lydia thinks, Good. She could use a damn _break_ ; they all could.

“You know what’s funny?” Allison asks out of nowhere after the last day of the semester, driving Lydia home. Lydia turns her tired head to stare over at her. Loose brown hairs frame Allison's face and the smile on it is shaky. Not funny, ha-ha. Funny, tragic and strange. “Nobody’s asked me the big question yet. What it was like.” Her pause is heavy. “Dying.”

“Yes,” Lydia agrees, joking a little. “Avoidance of that topic is what’s called ‘tact.’ Did you _want_ one of us to ask you?”

“I—I don’t know. I guess,” Allison murmurs, a dent forming between her furrowed eyebrows. She turns the car left and it lurches clumsily. “Being able to talk about it might be nice. I feel like everyone’s just trying to move on and act like it didn’t happen.” Which is partially true. Allison laughs quietly at herself, shaking her head as if in response to a doe-eyed girl’s silly questions. “I don’t know why that bothers me. We’ve moved on from other things, haven’t we?”

Maybe there’s a certain selfishness in being a ghost, in wanting to believe that your absence will paralyze the people around you, in wanting to know that they will never forget you. Lydia had not heard Allison’s voice in the echoing chambers of the others after she had died; she had refused, staunchly, to let the noise of it in, working to pulling Allison back instead of letting her go. She understands, because best friends always understand: It’s nice to be alive, it’s nice to still be here, but it’s hard when your friends are so strong.

“Can you _blame_ us for wanting to pretend it didn’t happen?” Lydia asks before she can stop herself, sinking further down into the heated chair until warmth seeps into her whole body through her coat. “I mean, it’s the idea of it, right? The idea that you were dead. Why would any of us want to discuss that at length?”

“You’d have been fine without me,” Allison says dismissively, shaking her head.

Lydia’s eyes focus straight over at her, and she shakes her head sharply, gripping her skirt. “No. We wouldn’t have.”

Allison looks startled—Lydia can admit that her voice had been harsher and more adamant than she had planned for it to be, but that’s what happens when you’re honest—and almost runs the red light in front of them.

“Besides,” Lydia continues, to lighten the mood, to cover it up, “Who else would buy my strawberry milkshakes at the mall on weekends?”

Scott had asked her to quiz him on SAT words last week. Lydia had told him that they’re easy to remember if you know your root words. _Germinal_ : growing, not developed, not virulent, like germs before they become diseases. _Clairvoyant_ : psychic, mystic. _Clair_ , French for light, for clear. _Voyant_ , French for seeing. Funny how the people who see ghosts are described as the ones with the clearest sight.

 

* * *

 

“All right, no offense,” Sheriff Stilinski begins, standing in Stiles’s doorway on Saturday, December 18th and gesturing at him with one hand, the corners of his eyes squinted, “But did I raise a hermit crab and just not notice until now?”

Stiles blinks up at him from the cocoon he’s made out of his sheets and quilt, the top of his head just barely visible over the opening. His hair’s sticking up in about fifteen different directions. His laptop is open in front of him on the edge of the bed.

“I’m marathoning,” he says all defensively, voice muffled by cloth

His dad’s expression gets even more dubious. “Stiles, I’ve seen people run marathons and trust me, it does _not_ look like…” He gestures illustratively at Stiles. “This.”

“Oh, my God, you _dork_ ,” Stiles groans in disbelief, rolling his eyes. “ _Luther_ , Dad. I’m marathoning _Luther_ on Netflix. You _know_ what marathons are; don’t act like you don’t. Don’t think I forgot the weekend I lost you to _Cake Boss_.”

His dad clears his throat. “Well, that’s, uh… That’s a different case.” He shakes his head, making a face that clearly conveys how astonished he is with himself for indulging an argument with Stiles. “And _besides_ , that was just one weekend. When was the last time you left the _house_ , Stiles, let alone this—war zone of a room?”

Stiles gives his room a once-over and hates to admit that his dad is kind of right—books and clothes are more haphazardly strewn than usual, and it takes _really_ huge messes to get a rise out of Sheriff Stilinski, who gets written up at the station for poor desk area upkeep at least ten times a year. Stiles huffs in defeat, scowling and burrowing deeper.

“Doesn’t matter,” he grunts in a tone that makes him sound like a pouting five-year-old. “I like it in here. Warmth. Internet.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll make you a deal,” his dad tells him, and when Stiles peeks out again, he sees that his dad’s arms are crossed at his chest and his feet are spread apart and oh, no, this is serious. “If you get out of the house for at least an hour before the day is over, I won’t _switch off_ that Internet you love so much.”

“Dad, no,” Stiles croaks in horror.

“Dad, yes,” his dad retorts, raising his eyebrows.

After a second, he softens, arms unraveling and dropping to his sides. He moves to lean casually against the door frame, but ends up sagging against it, the heavy sigh that drags out of him betraying his exhaustion. Any and all indictments Stiles had been preparing to spout off in response to such unjust bargaining tactics fade out in his mouth, and he just lies there, silent.

His dad scrubs a hand over his face. When it comes away, his eyes are on the floor, and there’s a weak and weary smile on his face.

“A lot of this stuff is still lost on me,” he says. “Werewolves, kanimas, darachs, nogitsunes… half the time I don’t even know the difference. I don’t know what you went through with that thing, but whatever it was, you won. And I don’t know what you had to do to bring Allison back, but whatever it was, it worked. And whatever it is you’re doing now—staying in all day, telling me not to pick up the phone when your friends call—maybe it’s working, too. I mean, maybe. But from where I’m standing, it just looks like you’re closing yourself off, trying to go it alone, and trust me, son—” He shakes his head, and for a second, his whole body looks like it’s about to break from how well he knows what he’s talking about. “You don’t want to go these things alone. I’ve been lucky. Every time I’ve tried, you’ve knocked some sense into me.” His eyes flicker up, finally, landing right on Stiles’s. “Consider this returning the favor.”

Silence hangs in the air for a few seconds, because Stiles doesn’t really know what to say to that—what he _could_ say to that—and he has to lie there like his heart isn’t in his throat, like his whole body isn’t coiling up from the sudden want to vault out of bed and into his father’s arms the way a scared little kid would.

He does manage to smile a little, though, for the first time in days. He hopes his eyes don’t look as wet as they feel.

“Thanks, Dad,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, yeah,” his dad replies, making a big deal out of waving his hand dismissively as if nothing could conceivably be less important than helping to restore his son’s sanity and sense of happiness. Stiles can see, though, that the corners of his mouth are quirked up, making the edges of his eyes crinkle. “All right, come on. You’ve got fifteen minutes to get out of here before I change the Wi-Fi password.”

“Please. Like that would stop me,” Stiles scoffs, rolling out of the quilt and onto the floor.

“Well, let’s not test it.” His dad taps his hand twice on the door jamb, raises his eyebrows down at Stiles in a judgey sort of way that is frankly insulting, and disappears down the hall.

Stiles stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars still left on his ceiling from his sixth-grade astronomy phase. He really needs to take those down. The sky’s right outside anyway.

 

* * *

 

It’s cold. Stiles’s breath streams in clouds out of his mouth while he bounces from one foot to the other on Scott’s doorstep to keep the blood flowing. It had rained all day, but then night had fallen and the sky had cleared, and now it’s freezing out. Stiles had even had to take his embarrassing knitted mittens from the glove compartment. This is an outrage.

He hunches over into his hoodie and jacket more, blowing out shortly when he shivers. “Damn it, Scott, come on,” he hisses to the door through gritted teeth.

He hears shuffling movement inside, accompanied by the sound of Melissa’s irritated, “If it’s those Jehovah’s Witnesses again, you have my permission to go full wolf and claw their—” and Scott’s desperate, silencing, “ _Mom_!” By the time the door opens, Stiles is already beaming.

“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as Our Lord and Savior?” he inquires as solemnly as he possibly can. The mittens kind of ruin the effect.

Scott’s face splits into a wide, ebullient grin. “ _Stiles_! Dude, you’re alive!”

And before Stiles can come up with a snarky response to that, Scott has yanked him into a crushing hug.

“Uh, yeah, but I won’t be for long if you keep—damaging my internal organs,” Stiles wheezes after a few seconds. Scott releases him immediately, hands braced on his shoulders, still looking so overjoyed it might as well be Christmas. Which it will be in a week. Shut up. He’s rusty. “They’re doing that tree-lighting thing downtown tonight, right? We’re going.”

Making plans has never even been a thing with him and Scott, which is nice. They always just go out and do it. Scott blinks at him, pointing his thumb over his shoulder toward the staircase.

“Oh. Yeah, sure. Isaac and I were gonna head out for that anyway, so—” He looks hesitant. “Can he come?”  

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, he can come. He’s meeting us there, though; I’m freezing and I know how long it takes for him to pick out the perfect scarf or whatever.” He jerks his head toward the Jeep. “Come on. If you make me wait another ten seconds out here I am going to literally turn into an ice chunk.”

“So… just come inside,” Scott suggests, all slowly, like it’s the most obvious solution (which, okay, it kind of is). Stiles scowls mulishly and shuffles into the foyer, kicking the door shut with his foot.

Scott nudges him slightly. Stiles nudges him right back. Scott grins wider.

“Dude, it’s really good to see you,” he tells him.

Stiles fights back a bashful smile, but nods silently at Scott a few times, hoping it gets the message across. It’s Scott, so of course it does. He claps Stiles’s shoulder one more time before making his way to the staircase, already halfway up when he calls over his shoulder, “I just gotta grab a hat and jacket. Mom’s probably got cocoa if you want it. HEY, MOM, CAN STILES HAVE COCOA?”

Stiles’s hands clamp down over his ears. Looks like Lydia’s got some competition.

“Stiles is here?” Melissa sounds both astounded and overjoyed. “Stilinski, if that’s true and you _haven’t_ come in here to say hello to the woman who made you more last-minute dinners than you deserve, I swear you are never allowed in my house again.”

Stiles makes a big show out of acting like he’s all exasperated, but it’s transparent and he knows it. When Scott shuts the passenger side door and pulls the flaps of his orange wool sherpa hat down over his ears, Stiles kind of feels like anything is possible—they could go find a dead body, they could go save the world, they could sneak into the movie theatre without tickets, they could get lost in the woods like a couple of morons, they could steal a road sign on a whim. That’s what’s always been nice about Beacon Hills, even amongst all of the chaos and the horror and the surprises and whatever else: It’s their town. It always has been.

It’s a fifteen-minute drive downtown and they spend all of it talking about everything but destruction, expertly leaping from the next Marvel movie to the best Cheeto flavor to how much of a nightmare their History final was because Mr. Yukimura is a sadist, and Stiles thinks, one hand on the steering wheel, the other fiddling with the heating knob because Scott keeps turning it down like the weird constantly-warm werewolf he is, it’s going to get better.

It’s going to get better.

 

* * *

 

Lydia likes Christmas. That’s not up for debate. She likes being _indoors_ at Christmas, where it’s warm and there are nice multicolored lights and a fire and blankets. What she does not like is being outside, in the cold, shivering even in her thick green peacoat and earmuffs. It isn’t even _snowing_. Beacon Hills is a travesty, weather-wise. She needs to take this up with someone. God.

 _Gelid_. Extremely cold.

“Is this thing ever going to get lit?” she snaps, teeth chattering. “I swear to God they bring us out here as some kind of natural selection, seeing who can survive the cold to make this nowhere town stronger or something.”

Allison laughs. Doesn’t even try to hide it.

 _Futile_. Hopeless and pointless.

“We can go get hot chocolate if you want to,” she says to Lydia in a placating voice, the kind she would use on a petulant toddler. She’s wearing one of those high-necked charcoal wool coats of hers, her hair tossed harum-scarum by the breeze. “There’s a stand right over there.”

She’s not wrong. Beacon Hills makes a big deal out of the annual tree-lighting on Main Street, lining the sidewalks with snack and hot apple cider stands, miraculously managing to get nearly everyone in town to mill on the avenue in unforgivingly chilly weather, by California standards—and trust Lydia, it takes a _lot_ to get these people to leave their houses at night, what with the town’s colorful history of… “rampaging mountain lions.”

“I don’t want hot chocolate; I want the city council to start doing their jobs,” Lydia grouses, her voice rising into an indignant shriek. “I’m filing a complaint with the mayor’s office; this is endangerment! I’m taking this to the Supreme Court! I’m starting a revolt!”

Allison laughs again, which Lydia does _not_ appreciate. She shuffles her rainboots—yes, a tragedy—closer to each other and tugs her collar closer around her throat.

“You _really_ don’t like being cold, do you?” Allison teases her, her elbow lightly bumping against Lydia’s.

Lydia huffs and rolls her eyes.

“Let’s put it this way,” she expounds with a withering stare in Allison’s direction. She lifts her hand to start counting off on her fingers. “Here’s a list of things more fun than standing out in the freezing cold with a bunch of rampant, screaming children, waiting for some idiot to put a plug in the right place: Medieval torture. Grading freshman English papers. The Ludovico technique from _A Clockwork Orange_.”

Allison sputters with amusement. “Come on—”

“Cookies with Deucalion.” Lydia tosses her hair for emphasis when she jerks her head over to give Allison a sufficiently contemptuous glare. Allison expertly stifles a chortle by turning it into a snort behind her hand. Lydia narrows her eyes. “Something funny?”

“No, no,” Allison replies innocently, refusing to do Lydia the favor of losing the smug grin. “Get into the holiday spirit, Lydia. Show a little good cheer.”

“I find that good tidings of comfort and joy tend to be much better suited to indoor areas with proper heating,” Lydia retorts. She refuses to back down on this. “God. If that tree doesn’t start sparkling in the next ten minutes, I am going home and suing someone.”

“Who?” Allison demands.

“ _Someone_ ,” Lydia grumbles. And this—the joking, the standing close to each other and reining in the giggles that come just from being alive—she doesn’t even question it.

A few weeks ago, she would have; she would have wondered how long it would be until someone tapped her on the shoulder and told her the truth, that she was dreaming, that this happiness was another trick, but, well, she’s gotten past it now. Allison isn’t going anywhere. The sore spot on her heart from where Aiden’s life thread had broken, that still hurts, but not as much as it had, and it will get better.

She slips one hand out of her pocket to tangle her fingers into Allison’s, and Allison squeezes back, giving her a warm, half-lidded smile that Lydia can’t help shakily returning. It will get better.

“You know,” Allison says conversationally after a few minutes’ silence, and Lydia glances over at her in response, “Stiles is here.”

Something descends on Lydia in a manner altogether similar to a falling piano. Her hand jerks away, along with her whole body, which she pivots around to accusatorially face Allison, who is blatantly taken aback by the intensity of her reaction.

“What did you say?” Lydia demands, curling her fingers into fists, because she hasn’t heard from Stiles in weeks and she knows just as well as everyone else does that getting out of the house has not been one of his priorities these days.

Allison blinks at her.

“Stiles is here,” she repeats in a wary tone. “Didn’t Scott text you?”

“No,” Lydia snips tartly, straightening. “No, he did not.”

“Oh,” Allison mouths. “Well, he and Stiles both came. Isaac’s supposed to meet us here later. I don’t know exactly where they are, but—”

That’s exactly when a call of, “Allison!” pops up from the buzz just a few feet to their left. Lydia and Allison both turn their heads in unison to see Scott coming toward them, sidestepping pedestrians and carefully stepping over directionally-challenged toddlers in tiny parkas. He looks ridiculous in the endearing way that only he can, in an orange sherpa hat and a brown parka with a furry hood and damp motorcycle boots. Lydia doesn’t need to have a clear view of Allison’s face to know that her expression is warm; she can feel it from where she’s standing.

“Hi, Scott,” Allison greets him.

“You traitorous bastard,” Lydia chimes in, copying Allison’s chipper tone.

Scott wilts, crestfallen at the words. Allison hisses her name and elbows her, but Lydia plows on.

“You heard me,” she declares, turning up her nose and folding her arms.

“What did I do?” Scott asks, stricken. His gaze alternates desperately from Allison to Lydia to Allison again. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t text her saying that Stiles was coming,” Allison explains, eyes shooting skyward.

Lydia stiffens, whirling on her and pointing a pink gloved finger for emphasis. “Not Stiles specifically! He didn’t text me saying that _he_ was coming, either! Or Isaac!”

She’s scrambling and Allison sees right through it, because she purses her lips at Scott in a _see-what-I-mean_ kind of way, gesturing at Lydia.

“Stiles specifically,” she maintains.

Lydia’s cheeks puff out indignantly.

“Oh.” Scott, strangely, appears relieved, if the loose upturn of his mouth is anything to go by. “Yeah, sorry. He asked me not to.”

Lydia stares at him.  

“Oh, right!” she exclaims sharply. “Because that’s so much better!”

With that, she spins around on one heel and stalks away, stuffing her hands into her pockets and tossing her hair back. Neither Scott nor Allison try to call after her, which is probably just a testament to how well they know her, which pisses her off, because people you’re mad at aren’t supposed to do what _works best_ for you in times of anger. She feels a flash of sardonic regret towards having made good friends; she’ll have to go back to the grab bag she had of selfish and empty ones.

She doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t care. She thinks that the path she’s storming along will take her a little closer to the tree, where the crowd is denser, which is fine, because that will make her harder to track down in the event that Scott decides to seek her out in order to give her an unnecessarily lengthy, heartfelt apology that will dissipate her wrath immediately. She is so not here for that. She has to be allowed to be petty once in a while.

She walks around by herself for a while, lingering by the apple cider cart and realizing that she’d left her clutch and, by extension, her wallet with Allison. She breathes in deeply and the chilly air opens up her lungs.

She shouldn’t be this insulted, because what have she and Stiles shared that would warrant such a wounded reaction, like, _honestly_? Some charged kiss in the heat of the moment that neither of them talk about, saving each other’s lives once or twice or three times, a repertoire of lingering glances and absentminded tangling of the fingers, a couple of monologues about how much they believe in each other—so what? She’s built herself to be above this kind of nonsense, this persistent swell of uncertainty and twinging heart muscles. It’s all clutter. Detritus.

She’s pondering this about twenty minutes later when she shoulders past a couple of people and almost walks straight into someone with two hot beverages in hand.

“Aaaah!” a voice she recognizes way too quickly yelps. “Dangerous! That was dangerous! You know, you really need to watch where you’re going at a thing like this, okay; I’ve got a—oh.”

She doesn’t even have the time to force herself to duck her eyes and keep walking before her head jerks up of its own accord and she finds herself face-to-face with—

“Stiles,” she breathes. His name forms a cloud of mist in the frigid December air that vanishes within seconds.

His amber eyes are almost luminous even in the dimness of the starry nighttime. He raises one paper cup a little stiffly and gives her an awkward, earnest wave with two free fingers, one corner of his mouth hesitantly, crookedly tugged up. “Hey.”

Lydia quickly examines him up and down, checking him for signs of malnourishment or exhaustion or _something_ , but he looks fine, just fine, less shaky, and that makes a painful lump dissolve in her chest, knowing that he’s okay, that he’s out here. Her gaze catches his when she’s finished, and he holds it.

“Hi,” she replies. “So. You’re back in the world of the living.”

“Why is everyone acting like I was dead?” Stiles exclaims, throwing his arms out in exasperation. “I was _around_ ; I just wasn’t—”

“Talking to anyone or interacting with anyone or answering your cell or leaving the house,” Lydia finishes for him sharply, “Or doing anything to even remotely indicate that you were alive. Yeah. No big deal.”

Stiles softens, eyes wide and dumbfounded. The tip of his nose is shiny and pink from the cold. After a moment, he seems to come back to himself, blinking rapidly and tilting his chin down to notice the two steaming cups in his mittened hands, giving a small start as though he’d forgotten he has them.

“You want one?” he offers, extending his left arm. Lydia raises her eyebrows. “It was for Malia, but she, uh.”

He nods over Lydia’s shoulder, seemingly oblivious to the tiny little pinch his words cause in her stomach. Lydia would not describe her feelings towards Stiles and Malia’s yet-unlabeled relationship as jealousy. She’s far too mature for that kind of thing. It’s more like… regret, maybe? Maybe. She always feels like she made a mistake, which is bothersome, because she doesn’t make mistakes, and if she ever does, they always turn out in her favor.

She had underestimated, apparently, the pack’s ability to converge and mingle in the time it took for her to walk around and stew. She follows Stiles’s gesture to see Malia enthusiastically wolfing down (ha) roasted chestnuts with Scott and Kira, her eyes putting the bright string lights along the buildings to shame. Lydia can’t help smiling a little. She doesn’t think she’s seen Malia so happy in the few months that she’s known her.

“She looks like she’s having a good time,” she says softly, unable to keep the sentimentality out of her voice. When she turns back to Stiles, she catches him gazing at her for a second before catching himself and flicking his eyes back to where Malia’s standing.

“Yeah, she said she remembers coming here with her family,” he explains. “Her dad’s here, too, I think. He’s supposed to be helping with the technical stuff. Wiring, that kinda thing.” He puts out the arm with the cocoa again. “C’mon, take it. You look cold.”

Lydia wrinkles her nose at him, taking the cup nonetheless. Heat spreads through her fingers and she tells herself that it’s only because of the warm liquid inside, and not because Stiles’s hand had brushed against hers in the transfer.

“The noble chivalry thing is not a good look for you,” she tells him frankly, sipping. “I don’t need your charity.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles joshes her, waving his free hand. “Consider it an offering. Like incense or something. Or a lamb.”

Lydia pulls a nasty face. “You really know how to flatter a girl.”

“I was implying you’re—you know. Deified.”

“By likening the hot chocolate you just gave me to the blood of a sacrificial lamb.”

“I _tried_ , didn’t I? What, do you want me to go find you a newborn baby, or something? I could. I have hospital connections.”

Were Lydia a different person—a crueler person—maybe the person she’d been a year ago—she would bite back, _I wonder how those will hold up now that half the staff knows your face as the one that led a massacre on them_ , and she’s profoundly discomfited that the part of her that can come up with those kinds of things still exists; instead, because she’s better now, because sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night wishing that Stiles was there to talk softly until she falls asleep again, she ripostes, “Let’s not test that. You’ve made your metaphor clear, Stiles; thanks.”

The two of them stand in silence for a while. It’s not awkward. They both drink from their cups and idly watch the people milling around them, shifting from foot-to-foot every now and then to bat away the cold. Lydia steals occasional glances at Stiles out of the corner of her eye. He’s wearing a red plaid trapper hat that she’s never seen before, and he’ll close his mittened fingers around the cup every now and then, exhaling through his nose.

“Cute,” she comments, and when he looks befuddled, she nods to his hands. “Where’d those come from?”

“My dad went through a knitting phase,” Stiles explains, holding one hand up so Lydia can better see the handiwork. “In case you also wanted an explanation for why they’re so ugly.”

“They are,” Lydia agrees. The bright green shade contrasted with the orange cross-stitch is an eyesore, but they suit Stiles, somehow. “But still. Cute.”

“Hey, uh, can I ask you something?” Stiles blurts out, seeming immediately regretful of the impulse.

“Is it about SAT vocabulary, because if it isn’t, I don’t care,” Lydia bandies back. Apparently, Stiles hadn’t picked up on the fact that she was joking, because a frown struggles its way onto his face and he clenches his jaw, clearly working through something.

Before she can explain herself, he asks, “Can you define ‘contrite?’”

“Sorry,” Lydia answers automatically. “Try harder.”

“How about—” Stiles ponders. “Interminable?”

“Never-ending,” Lydia says.

Stiles glances away like he’s—well. Like he’s contrite.

“Conciliate?” he mumbles.

Lydia sighs. “To end a dispute.”

“Concatenate?”

Lydia pauses on that one. For effect, she tells herself. “To link together.”

Then, finally: “Revere.”

“To admire greatly.” Unable to hold it back any longer, Lydia brusquely demands, “Is there a point to this?”

Stiles’s face is drawn into an expression that alternates between pained and earnest, and he swallows a few times, clearly cobbling together words with great effort, which should scare her, because Stiles has always been the talker, filling even the coldest of silences with chatter and hope. She realizes, in a rush of clarity that makes her whole body ache for something she can’t identify, just how much she’s missed him, just how much she’s missed standing next to him and hearing the way his running mouth handles long words, no matter how stilted they sound now. It doesn’t feel as cold out anymore.

“Do I seem different to you?” he asks her outright, his voice breaking slightly on the fourth word, his hand tightening infinitesimally on the cup.

It’s funny. Lydia doesn’t even have to take a second to think about her answer, which is probably bad, considering the weight of the question.

“A little,” she replies with a small shrug, tilting her head. “Just like the rest of us. Not in any way that changes who you are. And before you get all teary-eyed at the triteness of _that_ line, just know that I mean it.” She gives him her best aloof look, all lifted chin and neutral eyes, commanding all of the worldly authority that she can muster. “We’re all okay, aren’t we? That should say something. That’s what matters.” She gesticulates up and down at him as if to illustrate her point. “You seem the same to me.”

Stiles scoffs, his stare darting away. “You don’t even know me, Lydia. I mean, let’s face it.”

“I do,” Lydia insists, voice rising with conviction. “I do know you. Not as much as Scott, but that’s a given for everyone in the known universe. I know you well enough to know that what happened isn’t something that can break you, and I know you well enough to know that you’re still _you_ , and that—that _thing_ can never take that away from you. Stiles—” It feels like a movie, choked with melodrama and ornate sincerity. (Like _The Notebook_.) “It takes time. _Obviously_ it takes time. But looking at you now, I don’t see anything different, but I wasn’t really expecting to. That’s your superpower, Stiles.” She smiles wanly at him. “You’re… You’re adaptable. You’re stronger than a thousand-year-old chaos spirit, for God’s sake. Just because—” She takes a deep breath. “Just because you’re, for some _stupid_ reason, convinced you’re not good enough doesn’t mean it’s true. Okay, so you’re not some… amped-up werewolf, and you weren’t raised by hunters, but that doesn’t make you weak. It never has.” Words quickening into something she can’t control, something that might crack through a barrier that’s been crumbling little by little ever since she had knocked on Stiles’s door after Jackson had been declared DOA, she plows on and stutters, “A-And I know this is somewhat tangential, but I—you—”

Someone bumps into Stiles from behind, sending him stumbling forward until the cup of hot chocolate is flung from his hand and lands on the ground, splitting open. He and Lydia both make startled exclamations and stoop to pick it up at the same time, and, again, just like in one of the absurd movies that Lydia doesn’t want to admit she still watches with investment, their knuckles bump against each other’s when they reach for it.

It’s different this time, though. Neither of them draws away. Lydia stares firmly at the glistening ground.

“Jesus, Lydia,” Stiles chuckles after a second, his voice low. “Coach should have _you_ come in and give us pre-game pep talks.”

“Oh, please,” Lydia mutters. “All I did was tell you the truth. Trust me, if I had to come in and do it in relation to the lacrosse team, you wouldn’t survive the brutality.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, probably.” He clears his throat. “I got this, you know.”

Lydia breathes in sharply and jerks her head up to fix her eyes straight on his. He leans back slightly, taken aback by the intensity rumbling in the green.

“You do,” she tells him with uncharacteristic emphaticness. “You’ve got this, Stiles. And for what it’s worth—I’m really happy to see you.”

She makes the words sound like an attack, or something. Maybe she’s more irked at how freaking junior high they are than she’d predicted. The moment stops and hangs between them, waiting, quavering, and the goosebumps on Lydia’s arms aren’t from the chill in the air anymore, and she feels her throat close up when Stiles’s scrutinizing, curious gaze suddenly goes hazy with something that warms her whole stomach. A child shrieks in joy somewhere to their right. Lydia has a fleeting thought: That this is one of those things in life that people call chances, a crossroads, a fraught instant that will change the course of history, or something like it.

 _Nuance_. A subtle shade of meaning, expression, or sound.

 _Kindle_. To start a fire.

Strangely, Lydia Martin isn’t surprised when Stiles Stilinski wets his cold-worn lips and leans into her. His taste is warm and sweet from the hot chocolate. She swears she can feel his heart beating even through his coat, even though their bodies aren’t touching. Her eyelids slip closed after a second, and she breathes in deeply, moving her mouth softly, softly against his, which is so out of character for her she could laugh. It’s chaste and slow and cautious, sharing nothing with the frantic slammed-on contact she’d yanked him into in the locker room all those months ago, and it feels like it goes on forever.

Her knees start to get sore from crouching after several seconds. She assumes that his do, too, because they both pull back at the same time, dazed eyes all but riveted onto each other’s, breathing languorously until the clouds of fog their sighs make mingle and intertwine in the air between them. Lydia forgets all about what they’d both hunkered down to pick up.

The cheering starts far away, somewhere at the front of the crowd, and steadily ripples back until it fills the space where they are, and when Lydia finally tears her eyes away first to search for the source of the commotion, she can see through the crowd that the street is brighter, and that little variegated spots of colored light are twinkling on the pine tree.

“Finally,” Stiles mutters under his breath.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Lydia ripostes. She reaches over and takes his hand before standing, guiding him up with her without looking at him. When she turns back to him, her breath hitches in her throat at how close he is, at how disoriented he still looks, as though he’s just kissed a galaxy instead of a girl.

Their eyes lock. Lydia forgets how breathing works. She thinks about how much skin Stiles has under all those clothes, naked ribs and the shape of a pelvic bone; about what he might look like when he dreams, about his body moving lithe and swift on the lacrosse field under the pale flare of the stadium lights. (He thinks about how warm her neck must be behind the scarf, about all of the things she deserves to hear; about her soft voice hushing him, such a stark difference from the staggering capacity she has in her for noise that could deafen the world.) It only lasts for a second—the simultaneous opening and closing, the stillness of feet—before they both blink at the same time and look away, trying to pretend that nothing changed because there have been enough changes lately.

And maybe they’ll talk about it tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next day. For now, their friends are getting closer, laughing, Isaac with his arm around Allison’s shoulders and Kira with her shoulder brushing Scott’s and Malia regaling them with a story of the great and vibrant life to come. For now, Lydia steps a little closer to Stiles and slips her hand into his, watching the contact wake him up, and murmurs, “It looks nice,” and Stiles, not letting go, curling his fingers tightly against hers, looking for a raw and fervid second like he’s going to kiss her again, for real this time, lets his eyes stray from her and to the glimmering glow the tree makes on the wet street and whispers, “Yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from T.S. Eliot's "Preludes," Siken excerpt is from "Unhappy Hour," 99% of the inspiration is from Coldplay's "Always in My Head." This is a mess, basically. I needed a finals break.


End file.
